I can't stress the importance of real-world (that is to say, non-scholastic) programming experience.

I've had to hire programmers recently, and one of the main things I look for is some sort of history working on open projects. Having code in an open source project says more to me than most anything a candidate has done in a classroom.

The peer review process that goes along with publishing your source code to the world is intense. I know that I pour over code, desperately looking for any small tweaks and performance enhancements I can implement on code I'd be perfectly content turning in to a teacher.

There's a certain cool factor if your future hiring manager happens to be familiar with your work when your resume crosses their desk, but more importantly, you'll be learning the best ways to do things from some brilliant people.

And by all means, stick around PM and read all you can.